


crossing stars

by kathillards



Series: ad infinitum [7]
Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Samurai
Genre: Alternate Timelines, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 06:06:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11845509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: If there’s one constant in all of your history and all of his history, it’s that you always come back. But ‘always’ is a relative term.  ―- JaydenAntonio, across three universes.





	crossing stars

_i. the one where you never meet_

You just miss him, once.

It’s the most tragic of all the right ways you could have met and didn’t, and all the wrong ways you could have met and did, because it’s the one that comes closest to the way it should have been.

You don’t go to the market that day because you’re feeling under the weather, and one stuffy nose misses you out on your destiny.

-:-

If there’s one constant in this tapestry of fate and free will, choices and mistakes, bad decisions and right ones, it’s him. If you believe in anything, because it’s not god, and it’s not religion, it’s him.

Him, at age seven, standing on the other side of your father’s stall in the marketplace.

Him, at age eight, watching you walk away.

Him, at age eighteen, staring in mingled disbelief and dawning hope, when you come back to him.

Him, at age nineteen, watching you walk away again.

If there’s one constant in all of your history and all of his history, it’s that you always come back.

-:-

But ‘always’ is a relative term. You don’t believe in other universes, but somewhere out there, is a version of you that has to.

-:-

In the universe where you never meet, you’re always missing something. You move around the world with your father, you meet all manner of people from everywhere you can imagine, but none of them are him.

Of course, when you don’t know who Jayden Shiba is, it’s hard to understand why nobody measures up. Why no boy ever looks at you quite the way you want them to, why nobody’s hair is just the right shade of brown, why it just doesn’t make sense with anybody else.

You come back to Panorama City eventually, just out of habit. Maybe something pulls you there and maybe it doesn’t; you would never know. You don’t stay very long, but you dos catch a television broadcast of the samurai power rangers once.

Once and twice, and then three times. Can’t figure out why they feel so wrong and right at the same time. Can’t understand why you want to see them so badly.

Never realizing why five rangers seems so off.

You never meet him. In this universe, you can’t help but think that maybe you’re in the wrong universe.

-:-

_ii. the one where he never comes back_

One universe over, and you’re the samurai with the heart too big for your bones, and your destiny is something else entirely.

(Remember how we said that, in every version of reality, he is your destiny? This is the one where it’s true in the most painful way possible.)

You, when you’re a boy who loves to fish who learns to fight and fights for love, you are something else. Someone else. Someone who comes back.

He, when he has the same choice, is not the kind of person who comes back, and that’s the real tragedy here. Not you, but him. Because there’s nothing you could have done.

Jayden Shiba, head of the house of Shiba, is someone who learns to come back. Jayden Shiba, a boy who falls in love with a samurai, never learns how to do that.

And so, you wait.

-:-

And you wait, and you wait, but the boy you played with all those years ago never comes back. You grow up and grow old and learn to fight your own battles, but five is always, always wrong. Too little and not enough.

There should be more than five rangers. You don’t understand why, might never understand why, but you know it.

It’s Mike who puts his finger on it, one night when the two of you are waiting out a training session between Kevin and Mia while Emily sleeps off a monster attack.

“Does this house feel a little empty sometimes?” he asks, fiddling with the end of his bo, words hesitant like he knows they don’t make sense.

Except they do.

“What do you mean?”

Mike shrugs. “Like… I dunno. We’re missing something. Someone.”

But you’re not. Here, there are five of you: red, blue, green, yellow, pink.

One red, no gold.

You’re not missing anything, except for the rule of alternate timelines which says that, in another universe, you are.

-:-

At nineteen, you lay down your sword for the first time, and you pick up a fishing pole, and you head out to the sea.

There’s nobody there waiting for you.

Maybe there should be.

Or maybe he’s just in the wrong universe.

-:-

_iii. the one where he comes back_

Here, the Shiba clan has two babies in the wrong order, and you end up best friends with Lauren instead.

This is one of the good ones. Just close enough to the way it was supposed to be that you never really miss it, never feel that gaping hole where he should be.

Lauren is exactly what you need at eight years old, and you come back for her, because you have always been the kind of person who comes back for the people you love.

Jayden comes later.

-:-

You’re eighteen when you meet him, and it’s not under the best of circumstances. Not that it ever could be, with his sister lying half-dead in your arms, and panic pressing in and here he is – all the right shades of red, the eleventh hour hero – and you hate him, just a little.

Just a little more than you should.

He’s got the kind of haunted eyes that come from a lifetime of hiding, without the love that Lauren grew up with. He meets your gaze across the room and something sparks, something you don’t want.

You feel sorry for him, but Lauren is your best friend. Lauren is the person you would cross hell for. Lauren is the one who needs you.

And you leave him. It’s only slightly more justified.

-:-

“I don’t blame you,” he tells you later, before the battle. His arm is in a sling and his face is worn, tired, but he manages a smile, as half-hearted as it is. “For hating me.”

“I don’t hate you,” you say, but it’s not entirely true.

“You must,” he laughs. “I took her place.”

“Nobody could take her place.”

Jayden looks at you, at the unflinching determination in your eyes, at how you hold yourself high and proud because you are, you have always been, the gold samurai, and Lauren’s best friend. Her older brother can’t take you away from her any more than he could truly take her mantle. She’s your red ranger.

True red or not, he’s a replacement.

Still, you can’t bring yourself to look away.

.

Afterwards, he finds you in your room – and you should ask why it is that he keeps seeking you out, except there’s a part of you that seems to understand, even if the rest of your head doesn’t, the way the two of you gravitate towards each other like magnets – and he leans against the door and asks you what you’re going to do next.

“I don’t know.” There’s a letter about a fishing trip going round the world lying in your drawer. You don’t think about it. “I spent my whole life training so I could fight with Lauren.”

“Tell me about it,” he says, and for the first time, it clicks with you that this boy – this boy with the different shade of red and the smile that never actually crossed his face – has more in common with you than you thought.

Here he was, head of the House of Shiba, and here you were, the fisherman turned samurai, and both of you had spent most of your lives trying to get ready for a battle you didn’t really expect to walk out of, all for the sake of a girl who would never ask anyone to risk it for her.

And yet you had. Jayden turns to leave and the word “stay” escapes your mouth before you can think about it.

He turns back. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

You get up and cross the distance towards him. Up close, he looks so much softer, lighter – so much less the stoic, heroic older brother. So much more just a boy, with his hair falling into his eyes and his breathing unsteady, just a little bit.

“You can stay tonight.”

He doesn’t kiss you first, but you hadn’t expected him to. But he doesn’t pull away, only parts his lips and lets you kiss him. It feels right in so many ways you can’t even consider them all – can’t even think about how it always feels like the two of you are so close to an edge that you don’t remember stepping on.

Like if you move two inches to the left, you’ll be adrift without him. Like there’s worlds out there where this almost never happened, and might never happen.

At least, you think, when he kisses you back, at least it’s not this one.


End file.
